Saturday, March 23, 2013

Record Low Scoring in Round of 64

Last night I wrote a blog about the scoring on Thursday's game and how it was historically low. The scoring was up tonight, but not enough for this to be the lowest scoring Round of 64 in the shot-clock era.

The average score for the 64 teams was 64.55 points. That is 1.83 points lower than the previous record which was set in 1999 and tied last year.

The median score was 64 points and the mode was also 64. This is not a formal test of normality, but it appears to be normal. The 95% confidence interval for the scores is (40.8, 88.3). One score is below that (34 by Montana) and one score is above that (95 by Ohio State) which is to be expected (2/64 =3%). So a small number of scores did not distort the average. The low scoring appears to be a true trend.

I will continue to track this throughout the tournament to see if it is the case for the remaining teams. In general, the scores tend to increase from Round to Round until the Final Four: